Locomotion

CRAZY. “When Nye Frank and I started building the first dual car, everyone told us, ‘It won’t work, it’ll break, it’s too heavy, it won’t hook up, you guys are nuts, that’s impossible,’’’ John Peters says. “Telling me I can’t do something is like waving a red flag. If I get my mind set on something, I usually get it done.” Yeah, but it took a while. Persistent breakage during the ’60 and ’61 seasons did nothing to silence the skeptics. Despite displays of competitive horsepower and endless combinations of chassis configurations and intake systems, the big, heavy Peters & Frank dragster lived up to inline twins’ reputation for inconsistency, fragility, and the traction penalty paid for disadvantageous weight distribution compared with side-by-side setups.

2/15Kate and Anne Madison with John Peters' Freight Train. Picture by Wes Allison.

“Inline is the easiest way to do it—also the cheapest,” John explains. “We were both holding down full-time jobs: Nye at Hughes Aircraft, me at Engle Cams. We changed something every week. We’d come back from a race and cut it in half, make it longer, change this, change that. Back then, 10 or 15 bucks bought enough surplus chrome-moly tubing to build a whole car. Aircraft nuts and bolts were 10 cents a pound. We went from injected Chevys to a front-mount blower, to one blower in front plus one on top, to both on top. We also broke just about everything there was to break, but we had experience, and we worked the problems out.”

And how: Beginning with a breakthrough Top Gas win at Bakersfield’s ’62 U.S. Fuel and Gas Championships and continuing through 1971 with NHRA’s final year for Top Gas Eliminator, John Peters and his drivers dominated like no other team. (Nye Frank and Bob Muravez, aka Floyd Lippencott Jr., both departed in 1964 to campaign the twin-engined Pulsator streamliner.) The Train was the first gas car to go 170, 180, 190, and 200 mph, and also to break the 8-, 7-, and 6-second barriers. Dual Chryslers installed for John’s final season produced a 6.97 at 211—the quickest and fastest ever. Moreover, in each of its three major mutations, the Freight Train was arguably the best-known dragster on the planet.

The fact that this 45-year-old chassis even exists still surprises folks familiar with John’s history and his bitterness about the NHRA forcing such cars into a handicapped-start Competition Eliminator for 1972. Take it from Tom Jobe, a neighbor kid and future Top Fuel star: “John and Nye would always cut up their current car to build the next one. I don’t remember them ever selling a car. When Bob Skinner and I were trying to figure out how to build our dragster, their shop—which was at John’s dad’s house in Venice—was our favorite stop because they were always building or modifying something, and because John would never throw us out for asking too many questions.”

“I had decided to cut this one up, too,” John reveals. “When I told my wife, she said, ‘You get rid of that car, you can just pack your bag and leave with it. You’ll have divorce papers tomorrow.’ So, I hung it up in the rafters, instead, and sold off everything else. That chassis would still be up there today if Steve Gibbs hadn’t started the NHRA Reunions. At the first one [November 1992], he said he’d like to see the Train run the next Winternationals, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our win there. Pomona was less than three months away, but we made it, barely, with a lot of help from old sponsors. Without their parts, it would’ve cost more to put the car back together and buy an enclosed trailer than we’d spent on everything we owned, including the house. It was worth it, though. Bob [Muravez] made two easy exhibition passes each day, running 8.04 at 196, and we were swarmed by the fans. We still get that kind of reaction at the Bakersfield and Bowling Green reunions, even though the car only cackles now [due to tightened NHRA chassis specs]. When we went back to Indy for the 50th Nationals, several people said, ‘We came here just to see you guys.’”

“If they were still running Top Gas cars, we’d probably still be doing it,” insists Peters, 73. “With the blocks and heads they’ve got now, I could build one that would run in the 5s and probably 230, easy.” Hmmm, dual-engine slingshots blowing that ol’ blackie carbon might be just the ticket for filling some empty seats at national events. We can be sure that all it’d take to find out is for NHRA to (1) bring back the class and (2) tell John Peters that he’d be crazy to try.